Thursday, April 19, 2012

Seminary if for deeper humility.

as some of my closest friends know, i've been considering going back to school to get my masters in counseling or my seminary degree. not sure which one i'll do, or if i'll even do either...but I read these thoughts today by a guy named ray ortlund that i thought i'd share.

i am thankful for his insight.

If there’s any experience that can pull up to the surface the pride
hiding down in our hearts, it’s seminary. The very privilege of it can
go to our heads. Think about it. What percentage of Christians over
the past 2000 years have studied the Bible at the level of the original
languages? I have no idea. But my hunch is, one percent is too high.
Studying Greek and Hebrew and biblical exegesis – with all the other
majestic disciplines of a seminary education – should humble us into the
dust. What a privilege! But if our hearts are not humbled, we will
graduate from seminary in worse condition than when we began.
When I began seminary, my dad said to me, “Go through seminary on
your knees.” I did. But I still discovered stirrings of my pride I
hadn’t seen before.
I was studying under world-class scholars – Bruce Waltke in Old
Testament, and others. I worshiped the ground these godly men walked
on. Without realizing it, a new feeling began slipping into my heart.
It was this: “Hmmm. If I become as smart as these men, whom I so
admire, people will admire me the same way. Then I will matter. Then I
will feel good about myself.” Not that it was a conscious thought. It
was a subtle inward shift from Christ to Self. It was justification
not by trusting in Him but by leveraging my knowledge into human
approval. I starting seeing the world as my audience, and I was on
stage to be noticed. But the thing is, it was all in my head. Everyone
was displaying something of their own, hoping I would notice them too.
Everyone on the face of the earth is playing this game of
self-exaltation. It’s all wrong. And seminary doesn’t prevent it.
Seminary can arouse it, if our hearts drift from the all-sufficiency of
Jesus.
The Bible bluntly says to every seminary student, “Who sees anything
different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).
Seminary students should be the most grateful people on the face of the
earth, because what they are receiving is the precious Word of God. It
is not their own, and it is not for self-display. It belongs to God,
and it is for Christ-display and for serving others.
I recommend that every seminary student read – and the sooner the better – Horatius Bonar’s classic Words to Winners of Souls,
especially chapter four, “Ministerial Confession,” taking us back to
1651 and the repentance of the ministers of Scotland. My dad gave me
this little book the week before I left for seminary. Reading it was
eye-opening in an unforgettable way.
There is no shortcut to the personal significance every one of us
rightly longs for. Significance is not as simple as going to seminary.
It comes at the cost of deepening character. And there is no way to go
deep without humility before God.
This Scripture often comes to mind: “Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” (James 1:21).
Walk into every seminary lecture with that counsel in your heart.